#csae2015 CSAE Panel Debate 22 March 2015 Awudu Abdulai - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
CSAE P ANEL D EBATE S MALL FARMS : AN ENEMY OF GROWTH IN A FRICA ? #csae2015 CSAE Panel Debate 22 March 2015 Awudu Abdulai University of Kiel Sam Benin CGIAR Doug Gollin University of Oxford Diego Restuccia University of Toronto
AN ENEMY OF GROWTH IN AFRICA?”
CSAE Panel Debate 22 March 2015
CSAE Panel Debate 22 March 2015
Diego Restuccia
University of Toronto
CSAE Conference University of Oxford – March 2015
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6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10 10.5 −1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
ETH GNB MWI UGA BFA ZAR NPL LSO VNM IND PAK GIN HND WSM IDN PHL EGY PER GRD IRN NAM TUR THA PRY FJI COL VCT PAN DMA LCA BRA ARG KNA KOR GRC IRL PRT BRB CYP PRI SVN ESP ISR ITA GBR FIN AUS BHS BEL NLD GER FRA JPN CAN DNK AUT NOR USA CHE LUX
Corr = 0.61
Log of 1990 Real GDP per Capita Log of Average Farm Size ◮ Adamopoulos and Restuccia (AER, 2014) “The Size
Distribution of Farms...”
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Table: Production by Potential Yield (Counterfactual GAEZ Data)
All Crops
(country obs. = 162)
Actual Yield Potential Yield Yield Gap Rich 10% 739.5 1,220.0 1.65 Poor 10% 235.5 1,160.6 4.93 Ratio 3.14 1.05 1/2.99
◮ Adamopoulos and Restuccia (2015) “Geography and
Agricultural Productivity...”
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◮ Restuccia and Santaeulalia-Llopis (2015) “Land Misallocation
and Productivity”
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◮ Increase in agricultural TFP: 3.6-fold (output loss .28) ◮ Reduce inequality and poverty
Farm Income Q1 Q5 Ratio Actual .14 4.8 34.1 Efficient 4.3 14.7 3.4 Ratio 30.6 3.1 –
◮ Structural change
Actual Reallocation TFPa 1.0 3.6 Na 0.65 0.04 Yield 1.0 1.0 Ya/Na 1.0 16.2 AFS 1.0 16.6
◮ Broader impacts with endogenous investments by farmers,
mechanization, selection in ability across sectors
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CSAE Panel Debate 22 March 2015
Douglas Gollin Oxford Department of International Development CSAE Conference 22 March 2015
Farm Size CSAE Conference 1 / 6
African farms are not uniquely small...
◮ Most of the world’s farms are small, including in the U.S. and Europe.
Partly reflects advantages of family management and own-account labour. Also reflects systems of subsidy, policy, tax advantages, and other distortions. Definitions are also elusive...
◮ What is a farm? ◮ How do we measure size? (Area? Value of output? Employment?)
Farm Size CSAE Conference 2 / 6
Should we care about the size of the plot? The size of the land holding (i.e., ownership)? The management scale of the farm? Something else? = ⇒ Not always clear what we should be measuring!
Farm Size CSAE Conference 3 / 6
US data are heavily skewed:
◮ One farm in five actually had less than $1,000 in sales ◮ Smallest 75% of US farms accounted for < 6% of gross sales, ≈25% of
farmed area
◮ Largest 10% of farms accounted for > 75% of gross sales, > 40% of
farmed area
Similarly, in the EU, there are large numbers of smallholdings.
◮ For EU-27, tiny holdings ESU accounted for 47% of the “holdings,”
39% of the “regular farm workers” and 23% of the total farm work. But... only 7% of the UAA (farmed area), 2.5% of the total LSU (≈livestock) and 1.6% of the SGM (≈gross value).
Farm Size CSAE Conference 4 / 6
Farm Size CSAE Conference 5 / 6
The point is perhaps not that Africa’s smallholders need to disappear, but that there needs to be space for a large-farm (and probably large family farm) sector to emerge. What are the obstacles and opportunities?
◮ Barriers to consolidation... ◮ Availability of non-farm employment... ◮ Limited domestic markets for agricultural output; weak access to
growing urban demand...
Some changes are likely to occur organically; others may require changes in policies. Not helpful (and perhaps not realistic) to insist that development policies should only target smallholders. What kind of large farms are competitive? What mechanisms will lead to their emergence?
Farm Size CSAE Conference 6 / 6
CSAE Panel Debate 22 March 2015
“If, over the next half-century, Africa were to converge on the performance of much of the rest of the developing world both in growth and in poverty reduction, what would be the defining features of the organization of its agriculture in 2060?” Collier and Dercon (2014)
CSAE Panel Debate 22 March 2015
“The value of output per worker in nonagriculture still appears to be roughly twice as high as in agriculture in the typical country, and even higher in the typical developing countries. The implication is that there should be large income gains from workers moving out of agriculture and into
Gollin, Lagarkos and Waugh (2014)
CSAE Panel Debate 22 March 2015
CSAE Panel Debate 22 March 2015
CSAE Panel Debate 22 March 2015
CSAE Panel Debate 22 March 2015
CSAE Panel Debate 22 March 2015
CSAE Panel Debate 22 March 2015